Boris Johnson and TFL have announced the most ambitious plans for cycling the capital has ever seen. Almost £1 billion is due to be spent across London, focused on rebuilding London’s roads to make cycling safe, convenient and inviting to people of all ages and abilities. The ambitious plans include a 15 mile separated cycle route across the centre of London, a grid of routes in the city centre dedicated to cycling and an outer network of quiet routes along residential streets.
However, Croydon could miss out on all this. These projects will not be of much use to Croydon cyclists. There is a huge amount of money available to outer London boroughs to invest in cycling but this money will all be focused on just three boroughs. That means Croydon will need to compete to be the borough that gets the investment.
Croydon is an obvious choice to be the focus of this funding. Croydon suffers from tremendous traffic blight, frequently exceeds air pollution limits, suffers terrible congestion, has had a run of tragic road deaths in recent years and about one in five children are obese. A safe network for cycling offers the opportunity to tackle all these problems in a single investment. The population of Croydon is growing beyond what its roads could possibly sustain if driving remains the norm, and the trend away from car ownership is already showing with approximately one third of households in Croydon now not owning a single vehicle.
There are many who would not see cycling and walking become the normal for local journeys in Croydon, clinging to the car culture, to the status quo. Sadly, some of those are currently MPs and councillors. We need to do everything we can to get them to understand why this would be a fantastic thing for Croydon and that there are many of us who are passionate about this vision becoming reality. So I heartily encourage you now to e-mail your MP, e-mail your local councillors and urge them to fight for Croydon to secure this funding. An example e-mail is available on our forums, where you are also most welcome to share your own emails.
Your MP:
Croydon North – Steve Reed – steve.reed.mp@parliament.uk
Croydon Central – Gavin Barwell – gavin.barwell.mp@parliament.uk
South Croydon – Richard Ottoway – richard.ottaway.mp@parliament.uk
Find your local councillors here
Also please cc the following key members of Croydon Council
steve.o’connell@londonconservatives.com
And for extra brownie points:
I’d like to see a dedicated, safe, “inter city” cycle route from Croydon to the City of London. I guess if Croydon acquired this prospective funding and sorted itself out, an argument could then be made for connecting its network up with the central London routes. I am dubious, however, about what Boris’s plans for London will really achieve. I’ve seen a lot of lines painted along lethal roads and labelled “cycle lane”. They are not cycle lanes.
Check out the video on The Times – Cities Fit For Cycling web page. It shows a concept cycle path along the embankment that really is a cycle lane.
There’s been a fundamental change at city hall and in TFL that promises great things. The only thing that can spoil that is local borough councils, and Croydon council is one of those. We MUST let our councillors know that we want this and we need this.
The proposed CS6 (Penge to City) stops not far from Croydon’s borders. If they can get the funding and link South Norwood to Croydon Town Centre, bridging the one-mile gap ought to be a no-brainer.
The existing LCN23 is a pretty good safe route from Croydon’s borough with Southwark all the way to the City, unfortunately the bit from Crystal Palace down to Croydon is rubbish, whoever was in charge of Croydon Council at the time the LCN+ was built couldn’t be bothered to do it properly.
All I can say is that I really hope the powers that be can do something with a north south route along the A23 into central London as per Vince’s suggestion (assuming you mean along the A23). The existing CSHs are all well and good and the proposed east west route is fantastic but with the amount of cycle traffic on the A23 and the high number of cycle accidents on it it must not be overlooked.